Introduction: Family Dynamics and the Limitations of Psychoanalytic and Postmodern Conceptions of Self

[These materials have been excerpted by the author from Jerome Bump, "The Family Dynamics of the Reception of
Art,"
Style 31.2 (1997): 328-350]

n our verbal accounts of how we read literature, see a work of art,
or hear
music, usually the first thing that happens is that the "we"
disappears and is
replaced by an "I": the focus shifts to the individual apprehending
the work of
art in isolation. This shift occurs despite our increasing sense of
language as
a social act and the postmodern critique of the concept of the
autonomous self.
Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia, for example, implies a polyphonic
self, a
dialogue with internalized others that complicates the concept of the
single,
unitary response traditionally ascribed to the one who apprehends the
work of
art. However, Derrida's definition of the self as merely a position in
language
and Foucault's sense of the self as only an effect of discourse have
obscured
the fact that the self is not only fictive, it is also social, located
in
particular relationships as well as textual conventions (Flax 232-3).
Ironically, if even postmodernist arguments must assume some notion of
an
actual self, it tends to be, as in Foucault's case, a "socially
isolated and
individualistic view of the self" which "precludes the possibility of
enduring
attachments or responsibilities to another," and is thus incompatible
with "the
care of children or with participation in a political community" (Flax
217,
231).

This postmodernist blind spot about particular relationships pervades
academic
psychoanalysis because the chief authorities, Freud and Lacan, usually
assume a
relatively isolated individual in conflict with frustrating Others.
Because of
this orientation to individual consciousness Otto Rank conceded that
in the
twentieth century "psychology is the individual ideology
parexcellence" (389): social psychology, rarely integrated
with
literary study, remains preoccupied with society as a whole rather
than
families and small groups. In Freud's early theories, if the
individual could
maintain his psychic equilibrium by himself, apparently he would have
little
need for other people; indeed Freud suggests that as civilization
develops,
family ties and emotions must be sacrificed (Civilization
50-1).
Admittedly, Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex does acknowledge the
importance of some familial interaction (though it minimizes that of
the
preoedipal and of the feminine generally), and his later theories do
acknowledge the lengthy period of dependence of children and a role
for culture
and relationships in the superego and the id (Ego25,
19, 38).
Inspired by Levi-Strauss, Lacan also concedes the importance of
elementary
kinship structures.

Family Dynamics and the Limitations of Psychoanalytic and Postmodern Conceptions of Self